Amazon pays customers in e-book antitrust case [Updated]

If you regularly buy books to read on your Kindle tablet, then Amazon.com, a long list of state attorneys general, big-name book publishers and the United States court system have a gift for you.

Today, as part of an antitrust settlement involving allegations of e-book price fixing, Amazon is providing its customers with credits based on the number of books purchased during the time period at issue.

I woke this morning to find this happy news in my email inbox:

This is the price-fixing case in which Hachette, HarperCollins, Simon & Schuster, Macmillan and Penguin are accused of colluding with Apple to keep the price of e-books high. Appleis still fighting the case, but the publishers have settled and Amazon.com customers get the benefit.

The amount of your credit or check will be affected by how many qualifying E-books you purchased. There will be two levels of payments, based on categories of E-books. The amount to be paid per eligible E-book are as follows:

New York Times bestsellers: $3.17 per E-book. These include titles that were New York Times bestsellers at any time, irrespective of when you purchased the E-book.

Non-New York Times bestsellers: $0.73 per E-book. These E-books include any titles that were not New York Times bestsellers.

The amount you receive is carved out of a $166 million pool provided by the publishers, approved by the court last December, and applied as an Amazon credit. A notice was sent out late last year to eligible customers, and at that time they were offered the option of receiving a check instead of credit.

The credit will automatically be applied to Amazon book purchases – not just e-books – and will expire on March 31, 2015. You can get more details of the settlement here.

If you’re an Amazon customer and Kindle e-book buyer, did you receive a credit? If so, how much? Let us know in the comments.